December 31, 1908] 



NATURE 



= 5< 



luo often adopt a course which has the reverse cflect by 

 cxliausting the funds which might be theirs if they 

 only asserted themselves with a little more push. It 

 is this fact which has led to a result, not peculiar in 

 any wav to American universities, that the salaries 

 i)f professors often decrease in direct measure as the 

 success of their college or university increases. If 

 .\lr. Pritchett had carefully studied the universities of 

 lireat Britain he might have found .some notable in- 

 stances in our own country. Meanwhile the professor 

 himself makes strenuous efforts to reduce his butcher's 

 or t.iilor's bill, and if he succeeds it too often happens 

 th.il his influence as a leader of thought is impaired 

 in consequence. .\s the committee puts the matter, he 

 does not feel quite justified in demanding a greater 

 salary for himself, even though he is wasting the 

 universitv's energy in copying quotations, building 

 fires, and hunting about the town for a cheap tailor. 

 .\ course is given, though only five out of a thousand 

 students take it, and though these five would prob- 

 ;ib!v be as much profited by some other course already 

 offered. Yet to give that course is to withhold an 

 increase of twenty or twenty-five per cent, to some in- 

 dividual's salary. It is pointed out that in many 

 things institutions might profitably cooperate. There 

 does not seem, for e.\aniple, any necessity for two 

 universities in the >ame city to give courses in 

 Syriac. 



The problem which this consideration presents is 

 thus stated on p. 52 of the Bulletin. Given a certain 

 sum for salaries for a university or college of a given 

 si/c, how much must be sacrificed in the quality of 

 ihe teachers in order to have enough teachers? If all 

 the conditions of the problem were capable of e.\act 

 numerical representation, this would be a simple 

 problem in ma.\ima and minima, but in view of the 

 dilTiculty of translating the data into mathematical 

 language, we may be at least satisfied with the 

 committee's recommendation that one 600/. man 

 teaching a class of thirty-six students probably means 

 belter progress than two jOoi. men each teaching 

 eighteen of the thirty-six. 



Turning to the question of multiplication of colleges, 

 an important factor in .\merica has been the founda- 

 tion of a large number of educational institutions 

 associated more or less directly with certain Christian 

 J. nominations. These colleges form the subject of 

 Mr. Pritchett's address before the Methodist Episcopal 

 Conference at .\tlanta. Colleges which are under the 

 control of a sect, or which require their trustees, 

 oflicers, or teachers to belong to a specified denomina- 

 tioji, are excluded from the benefits of the Carnegie 

 Foundation. Mr. Pritchett pays a high tribute to the 

 work which many of these institutions have done in 

 the pioneer days of .American education, but points 

 out the great increase which has taken place in recent 

 years in the expense of maintaining a genuine college 

 on efficient lines, and finds that during the last two 

 dicades Christian denominations have found increas- 

 ing difficulty in meeting those obligations, and the 

 ollcges controlled by them have with few exceptions 

 received a meagre and inadequate support. There are 

 three positions which a Christian denomination may 

 Lake up in regard to education. First, it may sav 

 ih.at the maintenance of colleges is necessary for 

 cxtiiiding and continuing the influence and power of 

 ihe Church in question. Under this view the re- 

 sponsibility of providing the funds rests with the 

 Church itself. From the statistics given in the paper 

 it is shown that the salaries which denominational 

 colleges provide for their teachers even in the most 

 favourable cases compare very badly with those pre- 

 vailing in institutions under State or independent 

 control. .\ further objection to the svstem is the 

 NO. 2044, "^OL. 79] 



burden which it imposes on the ministry of begging 

 money for the Church college. It is clear that under 

 such a system burdens have been imposed on the 

 churches which they cannot efficiently bear at the 

 present time. The second view is that a church may 

 claim the right and duty to control educational insti- 

 tutions on the ground of religious fitness. But it is 

 pointed out that the maintenance of sectarian tests 

 does not, as a rule, conduce to the religious fitness of 

 a college; indeed, it has often resulted in a serious 

 lowering of standard, brought about bv competition 

 between colleges of rival denominations. The third 

 method is for a religious body to accept openlv the 

 view that colleges and universities are furthering the 

 cause of religion generally, and that the cause can 

 best be advanced by a Church if it exerts its best 

 influences on higher institutions in general without 

 reference to sectarian control. Mr. Pritchett considers 

 that such a solution is not only theoreticallv but prac- 

 tically possible, and that the abandonment of the spirit 

 of partisanship will strengthen the churches bv 

 enabling them to appropriate to their own use in the 

 training of their own men the facilities for general 

 education provided in colleges. 



On reading these publications we naturallv wish 

 that there was some body in England corresponding 

 to the American Carnegie Foundation, the more so as 

 the operations of that body extend to Canada as well 

 as to the United States. The very success of the higher 

 educational movement in Great Brit'ain has too often 

 resulted in a lowering of the professors' salaries. 

 This is particularly unfortunate in a country where a 

 continual struggle for the upper hand occurs between 

 the scholarly ideal and the examination (shall we 

 say?) ordeal. Examinations are not altogether bad 

 in themselves; they test the student's powers of 

 English composition, of e.^pressing lucidlv and in- 

 telligibly in writing the ideas which he has learnt. 

 They should also test his resourcefulness in dealing 

 at short notice with difficulties which have not been 

 anticipated by the teacher. But the teacher whose 

 tenure of office is at all insecure cannot but feel 

 that in many instances his means of livelihood arc 

 more or less dependent on the outside show which his 

 classes make when the numerical results of e.xamina- 

 tions are compared with those of other institutions. 

 Thus, instead of devoting his spare hours to research, 

 he is often led voluntarily to give private tuition to 

 those members of his classes whose prospects of 

 passing their examinations are doubtful. In other 

 words, a premium is placed upon inferior scholarship. 

 We have known of professors whose careers have been 

 ruined by their too rigid insistence on high scholar- 

 ship in contradistinction to high records of examina- 

 tion passes. Again, the need of retiring allowances 

 for professors was never and nowhere more acutely 

 felt than it is in Great Britain at the present day. 

 That it should be possible for a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society to be reduced to extreme poverty without even 

 a Civil List Pension, after devoting the best years of 

 his lifetime to the interests of a college, doing the 

 work of perhaps five professors in a German 

 universitv for a salary far below the line of comfort, 

 is an occurrence of which our country cannot feel 

 proud. To make things worse, this sad misfortune 

 mav not improbably have been the result of over- 

 work in undertaking additional administrative duties 

 for the college in a period of emergency. If the 

 Carnegie Foundation does no more for America than 

 prevent the occurrence of such cases its existence will 

 be fully justified, but it would be a great relief to some 

 of us on this side of the .Atlantic if a similar institu- 

 tion could be charged with the interests of the higher 

 teachers in Great Britain. G. H. B. 



